An Awfully Big Advencher
by shermitkermit
Summary: Sitting in the park reading a book may not be the most conventional opening to an adventure story, but things start to get a bit out of the ordinary when a strange yet charming man appears out of the trees. Though he is not your average creep from the woods, something about him is different, intriguing, exciting. There is however, a fine line between excitement and danger...


You had never liked reading. Liked probably isn't the right word. You never really had much time for reading. Not that your lifestyle was a particularly busy one, there were just other things you usually preferred to occupy your time with. Today however, you had made an exception. Today your free time was very much occupied by reading, as it had been for nearly a week now. You had come across this book on Sunday and since then had done nothing but read it, and when you weren't reading it, you were thinking about it. Funny how much a silly little story book can affect your simplest of thoughts. _Making a cup of tea? Hmm, I wonder what -insert protagonist's name here- would do. _That's what it was, a story book. A work of fiction. Of course it was. Never the less it was fascinating. Reading about this man's adventures, his days occupied with travelling and seeing new things - oh and the fact he was a god damn wizard. Magic exited you. It excited everyone. No matter what their view on life, everyone is fascinated when it comes to magic, whether they admit it or not. You didn't believe in it of course, and hadn't done for a long time. Your childhood had been spent sitting by the window longing for your letter of acceptance into wizarding school, waiting for someone, anyone to appear at the door bearing birthday gifts and telling you all about who, _what_ you really were. You had long since accepted that day would not be coming any time in the near, or distant future. Anything you wanted in life, you had to achieve, work for. It was not going to be handed to you on a plate. So you did your research, looked into all the sightings, all the rumoured locations 'they' gathered, all the suspicious dates recorded in history. You had found nothing, nothing that even remotely convinced you that you had an ounce of magical blood in you. Each year you would make your birthday wish as you blew out your candles. Each year, as the number of candles increased, the dream deteriorated slightly, until you reached your fourteenth birthday and decided that enough was enough. Since then you had barely thought twice about any other kind of 'beings' existing beyond humans. It wouldn't, it couldn't be true. There had been a few occasions where you were sure you spotted something out the corner of your eye, there had been times you had heard noises, seen things flying through the sky that couldn't of been planes. But of course you dismissed it, as everyone does when they cannot explain something, they simply pretend it doesn't exist.

You savoured each page as if it were made of gold, you often read pages over twice, sometimes three times before moving on and reading more. You refused to read more than a chapter a day, so as to drag out the reading process, extending the time before you finished the book, decreasing the time you would spend afterwards longing to be in the position you were in now. Half way through the book; the next page just as much a mystery as the last. You weren't sure what you'd do when you finished the book, read it again probably, smug with the coy knowing of what will be on the next page, and the disappointment when you realised that you knew exactly what will be on the next page, and the page after that.

You read on, you were currently reading about the man's experience with mermaids, it was one of the most interesting chapters yet. Upon arriving in Scotland for a friend's birthday stag do he had decided, heavily influenced by alcohol, that jumping into a lake would be a good way to impress his mate's friends. He had ended up getting dragged farther and farther down by six pairs of webbed hands who then persisted to try and undress him under water. He had casted a spell using his wand, naturally, that caused the mermaids to recoil immediately and him to shoot up and blast through the surface of the water like an excited seal at the circus.

You heard a noise from behind you. You sat on a rusty park bench that had been there ever since you could remember. Located a few metres of field away from the park, you liked to sit here so as not to be plagued by the cries of children that fell off of swings and burned their skin on the slide. Today however, the park was empty, yet you still sat on your bench, force of habit you guess. It was around two thirty ish, you had forgotten your watch and you didn't like bringing your phone with you. This was where you came to relax, not get involved in meaningless conversations and answer your phone and it turning out to be a kid from the year below putting on an awful accent.

Pulling up your wooly socks your hand brushed your thigh. You smiled as you remembered what lay underneath your denim jeans. The words you had had inked on you since last Friday. Your tattoo would be a week old tomorrow. No one you knew was dead set against tattoos so there was no need to keep it to yourself, you just didn't see the point in telling anyone. It was none of their business what you chose to do with your skin. It felt nice, reassuring even, just knowing it was there. It wasn't anything flashy, just a few words. Something that meant something to you.

You knew the area well. The space behind you, from which you had heard the rustling noise, was the beginning of a small woodland which, if you were dedicated enough to follow, would take you down a footpath and lead you into another wood, a deeper wood, a wood in which nobody ever went into, because nobody ever came out.

As normal, you dismissed the noise, put it down to this book and shook your head. Maybe it was having a bigger impact on you than you thought. What was the author's name again? You flip to the front cover but there is no name, just the title 'My Advenchers' and a badly drawn picture of a man, quite unusual looking with a pointy chin and his hair in a ponytail. The picture made it unsure as to whether the figure was wearing a long coat or a dress, you hoped it was a coat. A coat, you thought, made the fact that you found the picture sort of... attractive, more acceptable. You were unsure if the spelling was supposed to be ironic, or if the man that had written this book was genuinely that awful at spelling. You were leaning towards the latter as admittedly, the rest of the book so far had not been entirely grammatically correct - an example was when he had referred to 'surching for a place to lay me head in the middel of the forest was bloody mureder'.

It was October and the winds had started to pick up when you heard it again. The rustling coming from the trees behind you. Pulling your scarf tighter you thought about leaving, going home for a cup of tea, you could come back later. Yes, you thought, that was what you would do. But no sooner had you slipped the book back into your bag, which was mainly empty barring your compact mirror and a packet of toffee sweets which you picked on whilst you were reading, did you come face to face with him.

The source of the rustling.

He stood, leaning proudly on the back of the bench.

"What's the matter?" He said, deadly serious. "Not a fan of reading aloud?" His stony expression dissintigrating as he failed to stop a smile spreading across his lips.

"Neva mind, I'll carry on for ya if ya want?" He moved gracefully, somewhat _majestically_ around the bench, rotating his hand but not taking it off of the spot he had been leaning until he sat comfortably on the seat: one leg crossed over the other and his long arms streched out either side of him. You stood, mesmorized on the spot, staring at him in a state of disbelief. Here stood, or rather... _sat _a life sized version of the man on the cover of the book. Of _your _book. Was this the man that had fought off the mermaids on a stag do in Scotland? He certainly looked the type that would commit such a random act. His mass of hair tied back loosely with a red cloth like material, the strands that had come loose framing his perfectly sculpted face. Thankfully he did not wear a dress. Instead the man sat before her wore tight fitting plaid trousers tucked in to heavy looking black boots, his top half hidden underneath a long leather jacket with what looked like an old stick poking out of the pocket. His left arm had what could well of been another red piece of cloth wrapped around it, possibly some sort of cult thing, you could not be sure. He looked good though. For men that appear out of the woods are not usually known to emit such enticing vibes as the man before her was. The few stories you had heard about men in the woods had not been ones you would have liked to of encountered for yourself. He was different though. He was something else entirely.

"I sat, blurry eyed from the stunning charm that 'ad just 'it me, square in the face. Luckily none o' my charming boyish features 'ad been 'armed." He went on, reading the page of the book you had just been reading word for word, with only one difference. He did not have a book in front of him.


End file.
